Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann

Book Review - Eustratios
Argenti

This is an important contribution to the virtually non-existent
history of Orthodox theology of the "post-Patristic" age. Mr. Ware is right
in stating in his introduction that "four centuries of Turkish rule have left
 for good or evil  a permanent mark upon the Greek Orthodox world"
and that "without taking into account the way Greeks thought and felt under
Turkish domination, and the way their theology developed between 1453 and 1821,
it is all but impossible to understand the present condition of Greek Orthodoxy."

The book begins with an extremely valuable and well
documented chapter on the general state of Orthodoxy under Islam, with a special
emphasis on the relations between the Greeks and the Latins. A modern "ecumenicist"
will discover here many puzzling facts which could help him to overcome some
of the current oversimplifications.

Chapter II gives us an exhaustive biography of Argenti
and in chapter III through IVthe main theological problems debated by
Argenti  Baptism, Eucharist, Purgatory and Papacy, are presented in a
clear and penetrating way. Finally, a list of Argentis writings and a
bibliography crown this scholarly book.

As said above, the importance of the book goes beyond
the personal case of Argenti: it helps us to understand the tragedy of Eastern
Orthodoxy at the time when the West was reaching the climax of its religious
and cultural development. "Squeezed" between Latin and Protestant influences,
deprived of academic centers, Orthodox theology often surrendered to pressure.
Mr. Wares point is that in the case of Argenti it avoided such a surrender
and preserved its tradition from deviations and errors.